COLONISED LABOUR – A Seminar

Histories of unfree work in Queensland

ScoMo’s assertion that ‘there was no slavery in Australia’ (2 June 2020, 2GB radio) is plainly wrong. In the 19th and 20th centuries, abduction, coercion, violence, extreme exploitation and wage theft were constant features of the labour relations imposed on Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and South Sea Islander people in Queensland and elsewhere in Australia.

South Sea Islanders loading sugar. SLQ Image 16964 1 John Oxley Library, Brisbane

Why do politicians and conservative commentators continue to deny or downplay this history? Why does this history matter? How can we overturn the legacies of inequality and racism?

Ruby De Satge was known as a jill of all trades when she worked on a remote station called Carandotta in central western Queensland.

Join us for a day of talks and discussion about colonised labour in Queensland, the rich history of industrial, political and legal resistance by First Nations workers, and the significance of this history today.
Speakers
• Dr Jonathan Richards
• Dr Valerie Cooms
• Uncle John McCabe
• Paul Richards
• And more to be announced!
Saturday 27 March 2021
10:00am (for 10:30) to 3.00pm
AHEPA Hall, 126A Boundary Street,
West End
Free event! Gold coin donations welcomed.

Presented by the Brisbane Labour History Association and The Cloudland Collective

oOo

One thought on “COLONISED LABOUR – A Seminar

  1. Richard Smith

    We also know that with the establishement of the Presbyterian Mission at Port St George and then Kumunya on the remote NW Kimberley coast where aboriginal people were captured and enslaved as pearl divers. Descendants of the three Aboriginal tribes that joined the Mission to escape enslavement of being shot by the enrouching pastoral industry from the south-east are now settled at Mowanjum near Derby WA.

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